Manager, Sales Development

Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of Sales Development Representatives focused on creating qualified pipeline for Fireworks AI.
• Own SDR team performance against pipeline, meeting, conversion, and activity-quality goals.
• Build and refine outbound prospecting motions across AI-native, enterprise, and strategic accounts.
• Partner with Account Executives and sales leaders to align on target accounts, territories, qualification standards, and follow-up expectations.
• Work closely with Marketing and RevOps to optimize inbound routing, campaign follow-up, sequencing, reporting, and funnel conversion.
• Develop messaging, call coaching, objection handling, and discovery frameworks that help SDRs engage technical and business buyers.
• Establish clear operating rhythms, including pipeline reviews, call reviews, coaching sessions, team meetings, and performance inspection.
• Use data to identify bottlenecks, improve conversion rates, and prioritize the highest-impact accounts and activities.
• Hire, onboard, and ramp new SDRs as the team scales.
• Create a culture of accountability, curiosity, resilience, and continuous improvement.

Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in sales development, business development, or outbound sales, with experience managing or formally coaching SDRs/BDRs.
• Proven ability to build pipeline through high-quality outbound prospecting in a technical, infrastructure, SaaS, AI, or developer-oriented market.
• Strong coaching skills, especially around cold calling, email personalization, account research, qualification, and executive communication.
• Comfort operating in an early-stage or high-growth environment where playbooks are still being built.
• Strong analytical orientation and ability to use funnel metrics to diagnose performance and improve team execution.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• High standards for talent, process, and operational rigor.
• Ability to partner cross-functionally with Sales, Marketing, RevOps, Product, and Recruiting.
• Interest in AI infrastructure and willingness to learn the technical details of Fireworks’ platform and customer use cases.

Nice-to-Haves

• Experience selling or prospecting into technical buyers, engineering leaders, product leaders, founders, or AI/ML teams.
• Experience supporting enterprise, AI-native, developer-tooling, data infrastructure, cloud, or open-source GTM motions.
• Prior experience building an SDR team or outbound motion from an early stage.
• Familiarity with tools such as Salesforce, Outreach/Salesloft, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Gong, Clay, Apollo, or similar prospecting and revenue platforms.

Compensation and Benefits

• Competitive compensation with base salary, equity, and performance-based incentives.
• Benefits include comprehensive health coverage, 401(k), unlimited PTO, and professional development opportunities.